Page:The Fraternity and the College (1915).pdf/47

 ignore a rule of the house he is simply availing himself of a privilege to which his age and his position entitle him. In point of fact youth and thoughtlessness have always been considered the best reasons for leniency in the enforcement of rules, and on this ground the freshman and not the upperclassman should be excused for delinquencies if any one is to claim immunity. There is a common feeling also that at vacation times and during the summer when only a few men are living in the house there should be a more liberal interpretation if not enforcement of rules. I have had really mature fellows whose judgment ordinarily one could depend upon argue, apparently in good faith, that most indiscreet if not immoral things might be done with impunity in a fraternity house just so they were not done during regular term time. Such men are ignoring principle; they fail to see that it is the worst thing done in a house, and not the best, no matter at what time during the year it occurs, that gives it its character. Since I began the writing of this paragraph a fraternity officer has been to see me with regard to certain conduct in his house. All the men living there are mature fellows. "It is pretty hard," he said, in an attempt at the justification of certain irregularities which had been going on, "for mature men to submit to restrictions of any kind." And yet the mature man ought to be the